UAE excels for expat social life

According to a new survey the United Arab Emirates offer expats an extremely high social life.

Contrastingly though the UAE scored badly in a number of other sections, including making friends, integrating into the local community, enjoying work and being made to feel welcome in society. Just 20 percent of the expats quizzed said they found it easy to make local friends in the UAE.

However, when asked about quality of life, 45 percent said they enjoyed entertainment facilities in the Emirates, and 37 percent of the expats said they had a better social life than before they moved. A further 37 percent claimed to be enjoying a more active social life, such as playing sports.

This suggests that while there may be some work to be done to fully integrate expats into what is a predominantly religious and closed society, the vast resources of the UAE go a long way to helping expats settle in, with oil money ensuring facilities are of a very high standard.

Another factor is that while local friends were hard to make expats did not seem to have any difficulty making friends with other expats, 54 percent said that they found this very easy. This could be attributed to the fact that expats tend to live together in expat housing areas, again showing that integration with UAE natives is a problem.

To find out more about becoming an expat in the UAE visit our detailed City Guides for information on topics such as employment, health care, entertainment and more.